Jane and the Canterbury Tale by Stephanie Barron Read Free Book Online

morning—which, in the event, must have been considerable.”
    “Oh, Fanny’s all right,” Finch-Hatton drawled. “I’d go bail she’d stand buff against anything—capital little body, Fanny! But if we
must
stay here, we might have a neatish game of billiards, by the by. You don’t object to ale in the billiard room, sir, surely?”
    “Not unless you’re prone to spill it,” Edward returned brusquely. “Mrs. Driver has enough mess on her hands this morning.”
    Finch-Hatton had been lounging in the doorway again—it seemed the only possible attitude that young man could adopt. Now he thrust himself away from it with such an air of insouciance that the dead stranger might have been so much trussed game. What
was
it about Jupiter that drove all the young ladies of the neighbourhood to tears of ecstasy whenever he came in their way? The blond hair, unruly over the chiseled brow? The full lips, given to the most sardonic of twists? The powerful figure of a sportsman? —Or exactly this attitude of immense boredom towards the world and everyone in it? I suppose it might be considered
something
, for a young lady to excite so weary a fellow’s notice; but for my part, the conquest seemed not worth the prize.
    “George.” Edward nodded peremptorily in the direction of the door, and the gentlemen trouped out of the scullery without another word.
    “Young Finch-Hatton is growing positively insolent,” Mr. Moore observed. His nostrils were compressed as tho’
insolence
bore as strong an odour as the stables. “I wonder his papa does not check him. But, then, as I suppose it is
possible
he will be called an earl one day—perhaps the cultivation of arrogance is permissible.”
    “An earl?” I repeated. Fanny had said nothing of this; Mr.Finch-Hatton’s prospects had thus far entailed nothing more than the inheritance of Eastwell Park, a rather ugly modern house some seven miles distant.
    Mr. Moore shrugged. “It is unlikely, of course—but Finch-Hatton stands to inherit the title if the present Earl of Winchilsea fails to produce an heir. His cousin’s estate is so entailed. 1 You may imagine how this increases his appeal among the damsels of the neighbourhood. My excellent wife has condescended to remark upon it.”
    “Enough of Jupiter,” Edward said. “You have heard something of our sad mishap, I collect?”
    “And of its cause,” Mr. Moore replied heavily. “On how many occasions have I observed the total want of care and reverence so essential to the employment of firearms, among the youth of our acquaintance! I suppose we must give thanks that it was not one of our
own
young gentlemen who suffered the fatal tragedy; but that any should be compelled to offer up his life, in the cause of another man’s
mere sport—
”
    There it was, the inevitable stricture—but Edward cut off his old friend with one raised hand. “This fellow did not die of a fowling piece,” he said quietly. “Step closer, and observe the wound.”
    As I expected, Edward had seen all that I had seen: the stiffness of the limbs, unnatural in one only lately killed; the way the blood had seeped entirely into the ground in the hours before the body was discovered by Bessy the spaniel, so that Mr. Plumptre’s coat was not even stained when we knelt upon it; the deathly cold of the unfortunate man’s skin; the coagulation of fluids around the wound; and the wounditself—which was formed of a single, neat hole in the left breast, undoubtedly through the heart.
    “There are even the marks of powder on the man’s coat,” I observed distantly, “as tho’ his assailant stood quite near him when the pistol was fired. A sort of Judas kiss, in fact.”
    “Pistol?” Mr. Moore glanced at me in consternation; I must presume that ladies were not permitted to display a broader knowledge of the world than was seemly, when in the presence of the late Archbishop’s son. “Are you suggesting he was already
dead
when those young fools